Transparency News 1/18/16

State and Local Stories

Virginia is one of the few states that don’t broadcast legislative committee hearings, but two first-year lawmakers – one from each party – plan to make records on their own. Del. Mark Levine, D-Alexandria, and Sen. Amanda Chase, R-Chesterfield County, are forming the Transparency Caucus. Levine said he’ll make video recordings of all subcommittee and committee hearings on his bills to have a public record for constituents. Chase said her goal is to publicize how she voted in subcommittee and committee, and plans to use Facebook to keep constituents updated. “The most important work in debating, amending, approving, and rejecting proposed legislation occurs in committee and subcommittee rooms,” Levine and Chase said in a joint written statement. “Yet much of this vital work is never recorded.”
Virginian-Pilot

Someone tried to file fake tax returns in the names of about 1,500 state employees, and officials have asked to strip employee names from a public salary database in response. It's unclear where the would-be thieves got Social Security numbers and other information needed to file a fake return and try to claim an employee's tax refund, said Anne Waring, communications manager for the Virginia Department of Human Resources Management. Given the high volume of private sector data breaches in recent years, there are a number of possibilities. But the salary figures, officials believe, came from an online database maintained by the Richmond Times-Dispatch, which assembles its database from public record salary data. Waring said her agency reached that conclusion because the salary for a department employee caught up in the incident was exactly as it appears in the RTD database. Internal records included a slightly different number because of the time of year the data was given to the newspaper, Waring said.
Daily Press

The nation’s three major auto-title lenders are pressing Virginia officials to keep a wide range of their business records secret, including details about how often they get in trouble with regulators and how many cars they repossess from buyers who can’t repay their loans. The bid for secrecy is clear from heavily redacted annual reports the lenders filed with Virginia officials on Thursday. The redacted reports were submitted to the state as part of a public records dispute between the Center for Public Integrity and the firms TitleMax of Virginia Inc.; Anderson Financial Services LLC, doing business as LoanMax; and Fast Auto Loans Inc.
Public Integrity

A federal judge last week ordered the University of Virginia to provide requested education records to Rolling Stone, writer Sabrina Rubin Erdely and Wenner Media. The records were first requested in August. In November, the court said affected students could send in objections to the disclosure. On Jan. 12, the objections were heard in court. U.S. District Court Chief Judge Glen Conrad signed on Jan. 13 the order denying objections to UVa’s disclosure of the records on the basis of Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act. Affected students will have 10 days to review the records UVa intends to produce and to submit further objections. According to the order, all parties that were present at the Jan. 12 hearing agreed to additional protections for one of the affected students. The education records will be designated as “Attorney Eyes Only” and will have personally identifiable information redacted. Affected students will receive 24 hours notice before each submission.
Daily Progress

A federal agency has selected a location east of Winchester as the preferred site for a new FBI Central Records Complex. The U.S. General Services Administration announced Friday that it intends to buy a 60-acre parcel on U.S. 50 in Frederick County for the construction of a $109 million records facility, according to information from the agency as well as from U.S. Sens. Mark Warner and Tim Kaine. The new facility is expected to employ an estimated 1,200 people. The complex, in the planning stages for more than 10 years, would consolidate paper records currently kept in hundreds of locations across the country into one centralized facility.
Northern Virginia Daily

A federal judge said during a hearing Friday that she was troubled by part of a rule at the Northwestern Regional Adult Detention Center in Winchester that allows inmates more access to religious than non-religious publications. U.S. District Judge Elizabeth K. Dillon made no ruling and scheduled the case for further proceedings on March 3. But Dillon told an attorney representing the jail that she saw a conflict between jail rules that allow inmates to read religious-oriented publications in their cells while banning possession of most other reading material in the same spaces. The case stems from a lawsuit filed by a Florida-based publication, Prison Legal News, that challenged the jail when officials banned delivery of its monthly journal and two books published by the same organization.
Northern Virginia Daily


National Stories
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Unions representing Chicago police officers are fighting for the destruction of tens of thousands of documents from disciplinary files dating back several decades, just as activists and community leaders are demanding more access and transparency from a department under intense scrutiny after several controversial police shootings. The two unions' contracts with the city stipulate that the records, including complaints alleging misconduct, be destroyed after five years in most cases if no litigation is ongoing. The city says it has had to keep the files because of federal court orders issued in litigation going back to the 1990s. But the unions say they only recently discovered they still existed when the city informed them it would release all documents as part of a massive public records request by several newspapers.
ABC News

A television news station in New York is suing the New York Police Department for charging $36,000 to view police body camera footage. Citing the state's Freedom of Information Law (FOIL), reporter Courtney Gross with cable news station NY1 requested in April that the department provide her with 190 hours of unedited body camera footage. Four months later, the police department told NY1 that it would only provide the station redacted footage, and it would cost $36,000. The station, owned by Time Warner Cable, is "seeking to vindicate NY1 and the people's right to footage" with its lawsuit, filed on Wednesday and reported Thursday by the New York Post. "Access to such information should not be thwarted by shrouding it with the cloak of secrecy or confidentiality," the lawsuit reads. The NYPD defended the $36,000 bill in a September letter to the network.
Business Insider

Jack Goldsmith and Oona Hathaway called attention in several recent columns to the pre-publication review process that many current and former national security officials and other government employees must submit to before their work can be published. The process, they argued, has become dysfunctional, overstepping legitimate national security boundaries and infringing on freedom of speech as well as the public’s right to know. Their case is strong.
Just Security

Editorials/Columns

The press’ surprise forced march from the Senate, which Norment did not discuss in advance with fellow senators or reporters and for which he has yet to offer an explanation, is mostly an inconvenience. But there’s another word for it: revenge. Norment is a frequent target for reporters. He is usually in the newspapers not for how he’s helped his Peninsula constituents but for how he’s helped himself. With his run at reporters, Norment single-handedly gives new life to their old stories and ensures that he will face closer scrutiny, further aggravating his problems with the press. hat reporters, without having been asked, are being elevated — and I don’t use that word in a positive sense — to the Senate gallery is unlikely to alarm, much less register with, the public. The press increasingly is a whipping boy for politicians on the right and left who happily depict themselves to supporters as victims of agenda-driven reporters. What should concern Virginians is that Norment’s pre-emptive strike on the press corps is not just another cocky demonstration of his power; it’s that 20 other Republican senators refused to stand up to him. 
Jeff Schapiro, Richmond Times-Dispatch

The news media doesn’t get much love sometimes, and we understand that. So when the Senate Majority Leader Tommy Norment banned journalists from the floor of the Virginia Senate – where historically they’ve been able to sit in the back of the chamber – that might seem something that only mattered to us. On the other hand . . . here’s why this is really an attack on public scrutiny of state government.
Roanoke Times

Majority Leader Norment has shown his disdain for both the news media and everyday Virginians with his baseless move. When asked to explain the rationale for his actions, this was his response: “You’ll get used to this refrain during the session: I have no comment.” So much for the principles of open government and an informed citizenry.
News & Advance

I wrote a column last week poking at the Virginia Press Association for raising issue over a bill that would impact the disclosure of low-level public employee salaries. Turns out I may have missed a key point. The bill, filed by State Sen. Richard Stuart, R-Fredericksburg, would exempt public employees who make less than $30,200 a year from having their names disclosed publicly. Current state law exempts from public disclosure the salaries of public employees who make $10,000 a year or less. The bigger issue with the bill: “The bill shields the salaries of only the lowest-paid employees, but it shields the names of all employees,” Craig Fifer, the president of the Virginia Coalition for Open Government, wrote to me in an email. “Surely the public has a legitimate interest in how much taxpayers spend on an agency or locality’s leadership and key managers, among others. The bill starts with the legitimate goal of catching up to inflation, but slips in a sweeping policy change with unfortunate consequences,” Fifer wrote. And Fifer is 100 percent correct on this, as the bill is written.
Chris Graham, Augusta Free Press

Portsmouth City Councilman Bill Moody says he will fight a fine imposed by his fellow council members over a Facebook post he made in December about a closed-door meeting. Residents of that community — indeed, the whole of the commonwealth — should hope he finds favor in court. Virginia’s Freedom of Information Act could not be clearer: “The affairs of government are not intended to be conducted in an atmosphere of secrecy since at all times the public is to be the beneficiary of any action taken at any level of government.” State law gives public bodies the option of entering into closed session to discuss a limited number of items. It’s only an option — not an obligation, and certainly not an invitation to ignore the public’s right to know.
Virginian-Pilot

We applaud the speaker’s efforts to make the workings of state government more visible, more accessible to the constituents who elected the delegates to do the people’s bidding. As elected leaders in this republic, we also expect them to watch for our collective welfare. But sometimes legislative actions have unintended consequences and even inadvertently, one segment of the electorate may be adversely affected by legislation. The public must be vigilant and needs to see the workings of government. We need to see the process as laws take shape, not just when they are finalized.
Inside NOVA